


The first one

by Anonamagal



Series: Kisses [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-13 07:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18936079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonamagal/pseuds/Anonamagal
Summary: After another disappearing act, Keith finally returns home once he realises the thing he'd been searching for were the things he'd left behind.





	The first one

The crunch of gravel is the only warning Lance gets of Keith’s arrival. He uses his thumb to hold his place in the book that he’s currently only half engrossed in and glances up at the presence standing just at the edge of his porch. And he stares. Because at first he thinks he might be dreaming, it wasn’t unusual for Lance to fall asleep while reading after all.

Keith, with a bag slung over his shoulder, his long hair tied back in a low ponytail and space wolf at his side whose tail was wagging enthusiastically, stood smiling nervously. When Lance continues to stare, Keith waves awkwardly and in that gravely voice that Lance has missed he says. ‘Hey.’

Lance forgoes blindly searching for his bookmark and just drops the book on the bench next to him, not caring that he'd lose his place - he wasn't that into it anyway - and he stands up but doesn’t move towards Keith yet. He still thinks he might be dreaming.

‘Keith?’ He asks uncertain, because it’s been years since anyone has seen or heard from him. When the phone calls and video messages had stopped, when he didn’t respond to their messages, when Krolia had solemnly said she didn’t know where he was, everyone had assumed the worst.

‘Hey.’ Keith says again because he was awkward like that. Lance blinks at him stupidly before scoffing. He walks towards Keith, stops at the top step of his front porch so that he towers over Keith and glares down at him.

‘Five years and not a single word from you and all you have to say is “Hey”. Do you realise how worried we’ve all been? We assumed the worst Keith!’ Keith flinches but he kind of looks as if he had expected this kind of reaction. Well good, somebody needed to put him in his place.

‘I’m sorry.’ Keith offers in lieu of an explanation, but he looks chastised enough that Lance’s indignation fades.

He jumps down the rest of the steps and in one long stride he reaches Keith and throws his arms around his neck, yanking him in for a hug.

Keith stumbles in surprise, his arms lifting and hovering on either side of Lance before finally closing around him and hugging back.

‘Where have you been?’ Lance whispers into Keith’s neck. 

‘A mission took me away for a while and then I took some time after to think.’ Keith explained without really explaining anything.

‘And you couldn’t have messaged us to let us know you weren’t dead?’ Lance pulls away to ask.

‘I’m sorry.’ Keith says again and Lance just sighs.

‘Come inside, you look exhausted.’

In silence, they head into Lance’s home and no one mentions that Lance hasn’t let go of Keith, a hand wrapped around Keith’s wrist as if he were afraid Keith would vanish if he lost connection with him.

Inside Keith drops his bag by the door and toes off his boots.

Lance lets go and heads into the kitchen, he takes a kettle from the side and fills it with water, he places it on the stove top and turns the heat up and then he prepares a bowl of water for Kosmo.

Keith has edged into the Kitchen behind Lance, feeling uncertain, Lance isn’t kicking him out so he supposes he has a green light to stay but he wonders if he should be preparing for a blow up. He watches Lance’s back as he prepares tea and marvels at the fact that this is Lance, right in front of him and hopes to some higher power that this isn’t a mirage. He clutches the back of a kitchen chair to ground himself and watches Lance work around his kitchen in silence.

‘Does anyone else know you’re back?’ Lance asks over his shoulder.

‘Not yet, this is the first place I came to.’

Lance stills, taking in that information and trying his best to quell the burst of warmth that erupted in his chest. What could it mean that Lance was the first one that Keith had thought to visit?

‘You should call them.’ Lance says, he reaches for his communicator and holds it out to Keith. ‘They’ll be happy to hear from you.’

Keith takes it from Lance and when their fingers brush they both linger for a moment before Lance pulls away, he clears his throat and turns back to the tea he was preparing.

When his back is turned, he looks down at his fingers with a frown. How could the faintest touch leave such a mark? He brings his hand to his chest where his heart is pounding madly.

‘I’ll call them now.’ Keith says after a moment and then leaves the room.

Lance sighs heavily and glances down at Kosmo who has moved to sit by his side, he reaches down and scratches him behind the ear with a smile. ‘At least he had you to keep him safe.’ He murmurs.

By the time the tea is finished and he’s carried the two cups into the living room, Keith has finished his call. He’s got the communicator clutched between his hands and his eyes and rimmed with red. He smiles at Lance and places the communicator on the coffee table.

‘Shiro.’ Keith explains. ‘I called him first and… it was really good to see him again.’

‘He missed you a lot… we all did.’

‘I’m sorry for leaving, it just felt like something I had to do.’

‘And did you achieve the thing you set out to do?’ Lance asks, blowing on his drink before taking a sip.

Keith takes a moment to answer, his eyes are locked on Lance and he smiles softly, Lance pointedly ignores the leap in his heart. Keith picks up his tea.

‘I think so.’ He answers cryptically and takes a sip. ‘This is good.’ He says, looking at his tea.

‘Juniberry tea.’ Lance offers. ‘It’s sweeter then the stuff we had on Earth.’ Lance puts his tea down and fold his hands over his lap to disguise the nervous tremble in his hands. ‘Should I expect you to randomly disappear again?’ He asks, because he has to know, he has to be prepared. Keith shakes his head.

‘No,’ He pauses to bite his lower, glancing up at Lance from under his lashes. ‘I’m where I’m supposed to be now.’

Lance turns his head away to smile but judging by the way Keith is smiling into his tea, he’s seen it.

‘How are you doing Lance?’ Keith asks.

‘I’m good, I’m finally in a good place.’ Lance debates how much he should say but just goes for it. ‘There was a little while where I wasn’t ok, so I finally listened to Shiro and got counselling. It helped a lot, it really put a lot of thing into perspective for me, they called it Survivors’ Guilt.’ He looks down at his hands.

It had taken a long time and at times he’d gone down some pretty dark paths mentally, but he’d learnt that any of his friends or family would come running when he called, he’d lost count of the amount of times Hunk had travelled all the way to his planet to cuddle him, even Pidge and Shiro had dropped everything they were doing to come support him.

And Lance had done the same for them.

In time he had learnt to appreciate the life that Allura had granted them all.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.’ Keith says sadly, and he looks truly broken up about it.  

‘You were dealing with things too, it’s ok.’ Lance reassures him. ‘I wasn’t alone, and although it would been nice if my _whole_ family had been here,’ offering Keith a pointed look, ‘I managed. What I’m more worried about is that you were out there alone, dealing with it by yourself.’ He said with a sigh. ‘Are you going to tell me where you’ve been?’

Keith settles his elbows on his knees and sighs deeply.

‘Anywhere and everywhere, I visited old planets, to remind myself of the good we did, new ones, to see if I could offer help, and I found planets untouched by the empire, with aliens just living their lives. I…uh got into a bit of trouble in sector beta five and kind of almost died.’ Keith admitted, peeking up Lance anxiously.

Lance stills, eyes flying wide open. Keith could have died and Lance would never have known. He took a shuddering breath but Keith looked like he had more to say so he kept his lips sealed.

‘I spent a few months recovering on Planet Xinderas and it gave me a lot of time to think and finally I realised I’m an idiot, I was tired of being alone, of travelling with no destination, I exiled myself for no good reason when I had people waiting for me and I realised that I just wanted to go home.’

Keith ducked his head, a hand reaching up to brush the back of his neck.

‘Before I knew it, I was standing at the end of your garden.’

It only took a moment for Lance to decode what Keith was saying, Keith had wanted to go home and the first place he’d thought to go was to Lance’s. He glanced away to hide the blush that was creeping up his cheeks.

Nine years ago Allura had died. Four years later he had looked at Keith, who had spent his time between humanitarian missions and rebuilding Daibaizaal, with Lance, sometimes spending weeks at a time, helping him on the farm or just sitting with him, and seen him in a new light.

Or maybe not so new, things between them had always been building towards something, from rivals to team mates, from team mates to friend, from friend to… and then Keith had joined the Blade and Lance had been left with a void.

A void that had been filled in by Allura. He ‘d fallen whole-heartedly in love with her and by some miracle she fell for him too.

But even after four years, Lance still felt guilty for the feeling he'd been forming, or perhaps reawakening, for Keith.

He hadn't been ready then.

And Keith hadn’t been ready either.

Lance wondered if he should take Keith words for what they appeared to be. A chance. A confession.

Nine years on and it seemed they were finally on the same page. 

Lance gets up from armchair opposite Keith, Keith’s gaze snaps up, his brow furrows in concern but Lance smiles down at him softly and Keith’s shoulders seem to loosen. Lance drops down next to Keith and hesitates for only a moment before reaching out and taking Keith’s hand in his.

He gently threads his fingers through Keith’s and chuckles when Keith’s grip suddenly tightens with a shuddering breath.

‘Welcome home Keith.’ Lance says softly.

Unadulterated happiness breaks out over Keith’s face, eyes glistening like he might cry. Lance isn’t sure he looks any better because his eyes are definitely stinging.

Keith turns towards Lance, hand still locked with his and pulls him in, an arm wraps tightly around Lance’s waist and Keith’s face pushes into his neck.

Immediately Lance returns the hug, pulling Keith even closer, so close he can feel Keith’s heart racing.

His is racing just as fast though.

They end up laying on the sofa, Lance half lying on Keith with his head on his Keith’s chest while Keith runs his fingers through his hair, their legs are twisted together and their hands are still locked together resting over Keith’s belly.

This was nice, Lance hadn’t really gotten the chance to do this with anyone before, with war in the way, the most he and Allura had done was share some fleeting kisses where they could.

Like this Lance felt whole again, after such a long time living with the void Allura had left with her death and the one left by Keith’s disappearance, he could feel it filling with every tender stroke of Keith hand through his hair and the stroke of a thumb over his hand and for the first time he was overflowing.

‘You’ll stay?’ Lance asked, once Keith comes to a pause in one of his stories.

‘For as along as you’ll have me.’ Keith whispers. Lance smiles when he feels him press a kiss to the top of his head, in return Lance lifts their joined hands to his mouth and kisses the back of Keith’s hand. He snuggles further into Keith’s side.

‘You better settle in then, I’m not stupid enough to let you go a third time.’ They share a laugh and Keith’s arm tightens around Lance.

‘I love you.’ Keith finally, _finally,_ says. ‘I’ve loved you for such a long time.’ He admits, sounding choked.

‘I love you too.’ Lance says with no room for doubt, and not a single stab of guilt. He smiles. ‘And I’ve probably loved you for just as long.’ He admits.


End file.
